To Be Fair
by lirance
Summary: "And Starscream resents, most of all, how he now has nothing from this war, from every struggle and from every sliding slipping victory." Starscream on the nature of resignation. 2007 film.


A brain-fart that may or may not become a prelude to a longer fic. I am terrible at these things though, so I wouldn't count on it ^^; There will probably be some more snippets and ideas coming though.

2007 film-verse (sorry, but this has been sitting on my hard drive on a while ^^; so it won't be up-to-date with the most recent canon. Sort of an AU prequel/ sequel thingy.

* * *

><p>So. This was it, then. Millions of years, twisting and breaking backward. His whole fragging <em>life<em>. All the glory, all the pain, all the fierce joy, all the savagery, _everything_. All that, and in a handful of months, on some rotting organic planet, it all just… ended.

Doesn't seem fair, really. And Starscream knows, he's learned long ago that _fair _and _right_ are just fairytale words, in the faded lines of sparkling tales, but he still can't shake this feeling. Not fair. Not _right_, for _everything_, this immensity that he can't break and impurify down into words, to simply be gone.

It's like waking up one morning in a desert, where once a city stood around you. A city, with streets and roads and signs, and rights and laws and rules, and a million, million homes and sparks. One that you know better than your own self, where you know the doors that you can push aside to find friends and a quiet afternoon, or a refuge in the darkening night, or a silent space to rest a while. Frightening and brutal and savage, gentle and welcoming and quiet. And then, one day, it's all just red sand and blue sky, and a softly gathering wind, and you stare at the sun and wonder if maybe you dreamed every road.

And Starscream resents, most of all, how he now has _nothing_ from this war, from every struggle and from every sliding slipping victory. Just a temporary space in this planet of mud and flesh and his wings. Not even his trine, for the rest of the Decepticons are scattered, and he thinks that though he would blame them for it, he can understand why they'd probably just flick aside any message.

Why try any more? Why come to some organic planet and struggle and hurt for something that maybe never did have any meaning?

The Allspark, gone. Cybertron, a decaying planet littered with broken cities circling a dead sun. Megatron, gone. Why not just… go? Go your own way?

And slowly, Starscream is coming to reconcile with this. He knows, even without counsel, that much as he may still crave, _need_ leadership, that perhaps things have moved too quickly, and that just maybe that point in time when it may have been possible has disappeared.

Not that he'll ever say this.

Starscream shifts his trajectory slightly over the desert, sensors lightly reaching out, and finds something new to mull over.

Survival.

The rest of the Decepticons are far gone, and he is slowly coming to realise that perhaps that isn't so bad. Plotting out a new course, he gauges the wind, and adjusts his thus far random route. He has something else for which to work, and for now, the Decepticon cause can be flicked to secondary importance.

* * *

><p><em>And he's falling, fastfastfast, clouds shredding and screaming his passage, and everything's flickering and stuttering and racing, every sensor and node, plotting courses, trajectories, <em>escape_. The rain is the coldness of steel, colder still, like dull poison, a thousand thousand silvering droplets, and he seems to plunge straight down between them._

Hidehidehide_, fast, he needs to think now, right now, in this shimmering moment between the rain and the night. He searches every folder, runs every protocol, faster than a dozen sparkbeats, but still nothing, and he's breaking the clouds now, and the vast darkness below unfolds into the ocean. Checks every record, scans every detail. The water is a huge maw, dim and empty, and he feels as though it possesses some terrible gravity, like some dark and fierce power seeks to swallow him down, drags him closer._

_Seekers don't fear falling, but he does now. _

_And then, it comes to him. _

_Something between a forgotten file and a momentary sparkpulse, and he has it, like lightning between his fingers. _

_They're coming. _

_He can smell it, stronger than the rain and the rich darkness of the ocean._

_Starscream grins into the night, and suddenly changes course over the dull, twisting seas. Too slow, and he's too fast, and by the time they shatter the clouds, only the ocean remembers._

* * *

><p>At first, it had seemed an absurdity. The last moment thought of a mind chilled by rain and wind and fear, a final-resort chance, aching and shining. At first, the very thought had been insane, horrifying, repulsive, desperate, and this whole… game just something snatched from the sky, a charade, a stopgap measure.<p>

That had been forty years ago.

Forty years ago, it had all been _so_ certain. Just forty years. A fraction of a vorn, nothing, dust, the space between stars to his people. Yet, _here_, twenty years… forty years could be everything. Time to be born, time to grow, time to learn, time to fall in and out of love a half-dozen times and have it be every bit as radiant as the last every time. Time to love a child and watch it grow to become everything you ever wanted, or never wanted. Time to fade, time to mourn, time to live and love and die.

Humans had _eighty years_. Eighty years to do _everything_, and then, that was it. All of it. Oblivion and all that came before. But they seemed to somehow take everything radiant and shining and black and fading and press it into that little space.

And Starscream, arrogant, angry, cruel Starscream, who had only seen a cage of slow-rotting flesh, of useless, pitiful insects, had slowly been drawn into all, much against his will or want.


End file.
